Cecile McLorin Salvant

2410 Wickham Avenue,Newport News VA 23607

23 April, 2022

Description

The 24th Annual Ella Fitzgerald Music Festival Starring Grammy award winner, Cecile McLorin Salvant. Cécile McLorin Salvant, is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as“a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings”. Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, folk traditions from around the world, theater, jazz, and baroque music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010. She has received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her 3 latest albums, “The Window”, “Dreams and Daggers”, and “For One To Love”, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album “WomanChild”. In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, of a French mother and Haitian father, she started classical piano studies at 5, sang in a children’s choir at 8, and started classical voice lessons as a teenager. Salvant received a bachelor’s in French law from the Université Pierre-Mendes France in Grenoble while also studying baroque music and jazz at the Darius Milhaud Music Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, France. “Cécile McLorin Salvant sings, composes, creates visual art and can generally be relied upon to do the unexpected.” —BBC Music Magazine “Cécile McLorin Salvant has the type of voice that could lead a singer to stop trying, and the fact that she hasn’t—that she’s only working and thinking harder—demonstrates just what a talent she really is.” —Los Angeles Times “Her voice is singularly arresting, yet it’s no single sound. She matches this breadth of sounds and feelings with an impressive technical range. She also found her own unique identity, which is what most separates her from her peers.” —Wall Street Journal